


Repairs, Remedies, Real Fixer-Upper Jobs

by Vrunka



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-10 20:10:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18414998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vrunka/pseuds/Vrunka
Summary: Nate and Nick have a conversation about the past and the new replacements they’re both still adjusting to.





	Repairs, Remedies, Real Fixer-Upper Jobs

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Bromance zine that just completed! The PDF has some really great work from a lot of really talented artists, so check it out if you get the chance!!

“I’m flattered you want me to come with you, buddy,” Nick says. “I really am. I just.” His fingers wriggle, delayed motion. Nathan watches them twitch, disconnected from the whole. Bits and pieces, springs and cogs spread out over Nick’s desk. “I’m a little tied up at the moment.”

“I can see that.” Nathan swallows. Takes a seat in the chair opposite Nick’s desk. Stacks of paper beneath one leg to keep it level, cobbled together like so much of this world Nathan woke up in.

Bits and pieces, springs and cogs.

Broken down so easily. Replacement parts never quite what they need to be.

“This may take a while,” Nick continues. Giving Nathan a serious once-over, eyes lingering on Nathan’s face. Same face he went to sleep with over a hundred years ago—what feels like yesterday. “If you’re in a rush, I won’t begrudge you taking Piper instead.”

“It’s okay,” Nathan says, twisting his fingers together. “Really. It’s not a—a problem or anything. Waiting that is. I uhhh.”

He doesn’t know how to say it. How people like Piper and Preston keep him on edge, amazed by the things he remembers that they never knew; kids who grew up in this hard world with no knowledge of before the bombs.

And yeah maybe Nick’s body now is the same thing, some product of the wasteland with no ties to before. But his mind is different. His mind is...is old. Older than Nathan himself.

Shared tragedy and dead lovers. They’re similar in so many ways.

“Okay then,” Nick says. His eyes drift back down to his own arm.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

Nick looks up. Where his eyebrows would be if he had eyebrows raises. “With this?”

“Yeah. I just.” Even before he was never eloquent, but cryosleep has made it worse, frozen his tongue and his throat. Stalled all hope of him being charismatic. “If you needed anything. I guess.”

“Been a synth for a long time now, Nate. I’m used to these routine repairs. Honest.”

“I don’t think of you as a synth,” Nathan says.

Nick grins. When he tips his head, something in his neck clicks and rattles. Shaken loose. “I know what I am, Nate. I’m not winning any beauty contests that’s for damn sure. Wasn’t before this uhh metal makeover either but you know.”

“I don’t know. I’m not talking about how you look. I’m talking about you. About you, Nick Valentine not-not-not that other Nick. I don’t think of you as synth because you’re my friend. My best friend...if I’m. If I’m being honest.”

Nick doesn’t blink because Nick never blinks, but the lights in his eyes seem to flicker. Yellow bands of his irises spinning in a slow, thinking circle.

“Well thanks,” he says, awkwardly. Fingers he hasn’t finished repairing twitch again, clattering softly against the wood of the desk. “I—,”

“You don’t have to say it back, it’s fine.”

“No it—it isn’t that. You’re...well I guess my best friend too, Nate. Besides Ellie. I’ve just,” he pauses, expression some half-taut of between emotions, mouth not quite forming anything at all. Without lips it’s hard to tell sometimes what expression Nick is aiming for; Nathan swallows, he waits.

“For a long time now,” Nick says, “I haven’t really thought about that kind of stuff. Haven’t needed to. I woke up a Synth, you know? Woke up not knowing...well damn near anything about myself. Having good, actual, real true friends has been the last thing on my mind.”

“The Wasteland is a harsh reality,” Nathan offers.

“And you of all people know that better than anyone.”

“You do too, you remember life before.”

“But it isn’t the same. Sure a piece of my brain has these...these memories. You know, baseball and grassy yards and white picket fences but it’s not—“ 

He frowns, skin around the hole in his neck fluttering slightly, humming with his thinking, servos whirling madly. “Nick, other Nick, I guess, well he didn’t have very many friends either so it’s,” he pauses again, he doesn’t look away from Nathan’s face as he says, “It’s new, is what I mean. For...for the both of us. For me.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. So sorry if I’m not uhh—,”

“You’re not not anything. I meant what I said,” Nathan says. He wants to say something more, about priorities and abstract loneliness and how he gets it but the words get all screwed up between his head and his tongue, get twisted round and what comes out is, “Maybe this is something good the bombs brought. Us lonely assholes finding...finding each other.”

Nick snorts, voice catching and clipping in a choppy, poorly recorded sort of way. “That’s one helluva silver lining to the whole thing, sure.”

“I’ve never been accused of being an optimist before.”

“Don’t know how you couldn’t be. The rose tint to your glasses is so bad I kinda wonder if someone gouged your eyes out there, Nate.”

And that metaphor brushes maybe a little too close to the feel of Kellogg’s eyes bursting like grapes beneath Nathan’s thumbs. He shivers, crosses his arms and firmly tries not to remember breaking the man who killed his wife and abducted his child. Breaking the fuckin’ monster’s face right open.

“Sorry,” Nick says. “That was a poor choice of words, eh?”

“It’s fine.”

It is. With anyone else, maybe it wouldn’t be. Nick is different. Is special. Nathan’s best friend.

“You mean what you said about helping earlier too,” Nick asks. He twirls a screwdriver in his good hand. His joints click, click, click with the movement.

Nathan recognizes an olive branch when he sees it.

“If you want me to. I’m uhh. I used to be really...really good at that stuff. Small repairs. Big repairs.”

Fitting the cogs and wheels and fixes into place. Making do. Stacks of papers under chair legs.

“Then by all means, be my guest,” Nick says, flipping the screwdriver once more. Holding it handle out in Nathan’s direction. “I’m used to this body, doesn’t mean I like this mechanical stuff.”

“I attempted to fix that Mister Handy that floats around Sunshine Tidings Co Op,” Nathan says. He presses lightly down on Nick’s stripped hand, touches each knuckle in turn. “Didn’t really work out so well,” he admits, “thing followed me for two days spouting its weird hippie stuff.”

“So don’t let you meddle around it my brain pan, got it,” Nick says. Again he wears a half-formed sort of expression. Nathan understands the implied wink, the implied grin.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Nathan says. And the two of them lapse into silence. Easy silence, comfortable. Nathan hums under his breath while he pulls the old, rusting joints apart. As he rebuilds them with the bits and bobs Nick has collected and strewn about the table.

Repurposed nuts and bolts; shiny, slick metal.

Nathan lifts up one that clearly used to be a spring for a Vault Tech bobblehead; bright blue paint flakes stuck to the metal coil. Nick watches as Nathan fits it into place.

“You aren’t gonna ask why I don’t take parts from the other synths we kill?” He says, finally. His voice parameters don’t allow for him to sound hesitant or ashamed, and Nathan isn’t sure either emotion is the appropriate one anyway.

“I wasn’t.”

“You weren’t even thinking it?”

“Kinda ghoulish, no? Asking why you don’t harvest from the dead. Even...even robot dead. No. I wasn’t thinking it.”

Nick’s cheeks and mouth pull up into the approximation of a grin. He doesn’t say anything more.

Doesn’t confirm that they are indeed best friends. He doesn’t need to. The way his shoulders relax some, metal body slouching as Nathan finishes up the repairs says it all.

Maybe this time, this once, the replacement parts of this new and vicious world are exactly, exactly, what was needed.


End file.
